We lived in Williamstown for one year only, when I was 5. I had my 6th birthday there. We left when Dad preached about kneeling, and the United Church congregation were up in arms that he would suggest such a thing.

He came home with tickets to England and said: “Start packing, we’re going back to England.” And that was that! Mother had just gotten promotion at her job with Census Canada and didn’t even have a chance to tell him. Such was life with Dad.

No more tapping the maple trees and boiling the syrup on the old wood stove in the back kitchen, no more catching tadpoles in the stream that ran in front of our house, no more bobbing for apples and coating them in maple syrup toffee, no more playing in the woods that surrounded our big house or doing performances on the balcony off my bedroom window.

No more fluffy, ginger cat. No more little girl friends who had gathered together at our house for my sixth birthday. No chance to start school with my friends the following autumn.

I have such fond memories of the year we lived there: going with Dad round the trees he’d tapped and collecting the maple syrup and boiling it on the stove; Sunday tea upstairs with drop scones and boiled eggs…Christmas morning, creeping down the stairs and over hearing someone say there is no Santa Claus, and asking: “Who says there’s no Santa Claus.” Sitting on the staircase with Dad, learning how to tie my shoe laces and also how to polish my shoes…

I think by the time we left Williamstown I was getting used to moving, it being the fourth place I’d lived in by the time I was five. When I came here last week, it was the 108th move in my lifetime, 55 of those in the last 6 six years, though there may have been one or two others that I haven’t counted.